5 Players who could replace Mitchell Santner for CSK

Mitchell Santner has been ruled out of International cricket for the next 9 months as he’ll be needing knee surgery for a bone defect that was diagnosed after the limited overs series against England.

Santer was bought for his base price by the Chennai franchise in the IPL, and will now miss the entire IPL 2018, giving CSK the option of opting for a replacement.

Now, while Santner is a bowling all-rounder and if CSK want a like for like replacement they should be going in for a slow bowling all-rounder, with the kind of team that they have, an opening batsman or a good foreign fast bowler might be the way to go.

With Jadeja and Bravo(bowling all rounders) set to be in the first XI and Watson, Jadhav and Raina(batting all rounders) to make it too, CSK don’t necessarily need any more all-rounders.

Now, with just Mark Wood and Ngidi as their foreign fast bowling recruits, CSK could be going in with one of those initially overlooked International fast bowlers.

Also, with no explosive foreign batsman in the top 4(du Plessis is not really explosive), they could be going in for those umpteen overseas opening batsmen).

Here are 5 players CSK could buy

Martin Guptill

Martin Guptill going unsold was one of the biggest mysteries of the IPL auction. With a base price of just Rs 75 lakhs, Guptill should be have been gobbled up by some franchise, but for some reason, unknown to the sane, teams opted out of bidding for him.

Guptill is the 5th ranked batsmen in the ICC T20I Rankings and has been in stellar form during the T20 tri series against England and Australia and the home ODI series against England.

He recently scored the fastest T20 ton by a New Zealander with a 49 ball against the Aussies.

Guptill could fit right into the CSK XI, providing them with that much needed oomph at the top of the order and with Fleming pulling the strings with respect to team selections, he would be aware of the talent and skill of Guptill(being his countryman) and could get him in right away.

About the author

Utkarsh Bhatla